Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a cell culture device and a method of manufacturing the same.
Description of the Related Art
The cell culture technology has recently been drawn attention as the useful technique in various fields such as drug development and regenerative medicine. A method using a membrane scaffold (cell culture membrane) has been known as an example of the method of culturing a scaffold-based cells. A cell culture device in which the cell culture membrane is fixed to a substrate has generally been used for cell culture using such a cell culture membrane, for the purpose of, for example, reinforcing the cell culture membrane and facilitating handling of the cell culture membrane.
An available technique of fixing the cell culture membrane to the substrate is a method using, for example, an adhesive tape or an adhesive agent. In this method, however, an additive included in the adhesive tape or the adhesive agent is likely to be eluted in a culture solution and affect cell culture. A method proposed to fix the cell culture membrane to the substrate while suppressing elution of an additive that is likely to affect cell culture, into a culture solution is a method that makes both the cell culture membrane and the substrate from thermoplastic resins and welds the cell culture membrane and the substrate to each other by heat or ultrasonic vibration (for example, JP 2011-120504A).
When the cell culture membrane and tile substrate are fixed to each other by welding, however, the cell culture membrane is swollen together with the substrate by heating in the welding process. When the temperature is subsequently decreased to complete the welding, the cell culture membrane is contracted together with the substrate. This is likely to cause deformation of the cell culture membrane in the neighborhood of the welded part (for example, stretch or wrinkle) and damage the flatness on a culture surface of the cell culture membrane. In the cell culture membrane, reducing the flatness on the culture surface is likely to affect cultured cells and provide noise of the culture condition during cell culture. This is likely to fail to keep the culture conditions sufficiently constant and thereby cause a problem, such as variability in results of analysis.